The Obama Administration’s current strategy for fighting ISIS centers on training and relying on anti-caliphate (non-US) forces in the region to take back territory. The anti-caliphate forces are supplemented by US airstrikes. Obama has specifically avoided sending US troops into combat zones in Syria and Iraq.

Despite the memo’s warnings, Pelosi has stood by the president’s strategy for the past two years.

In May 2015 Pelosi said that in order to achieve victory, the US must fight ISIS on a “social media” front.

“That’s a place where they have really made more advances than you would have suspected, and that is where we have to fight them, as well,” she told MSNBC’s Patrick Murphy. “We have to fight them on all fronts. Communication-wise as well as militarily.”

In November 2015 Pelosi once again backed up Obama, this time after he told American citizens that “ISIS is contained.”